Project team clear there would be no interference

The Moriarty Tribunal: A former member of the project team which selected the winning bid for the State's second mobile phone licence has said it was his clear understanding that the team would do its work without any political interference

Mr Sean McMahon said it was his understanding that the team's decision would be brought to government and would not be rejected without very good reason.

Mr McMahon, who during the period worked as the "de facto" regulator for the telecommunications sector, contrasted the situation concerning the project team's work with that of his role as telecommunications regulator.

He told Mr Jerry Healy SC, for the tribunal, that he would have liked to have worked free from ministerial interference in his role as regulator but he was always under the "purview of the minister".

He said he tried to minimise this as much as he could. He said he considered it his job to distance the role of regulator from the minister in so far as this was possible at the time and under the law as then existed. Mr McMahon said he wasn't sure when exactly he first learned of the involvement of Mr Dermot Desmond's IIU Ltd in the Esat Digifone consortium, but it was after the decision of the project team was announced on October 25th, 1995. He said he met Mr Denis O'Brien at a meeting on April 26th, 1996, and his notes record his quizzing Mr O'Brien about the matter. His notes record Mr O'Brien as saying IIU had a stake of between 10 per cent and 12.5 per cent.

Mr McMahon told Mr Healy that he had been in favour of the project team holding "round table" discussions where they would have discussed the assessments of the various different aspects of the bids made by sub-groups of the committee. He said he still believed this would have been a good idea.

Mr McMahon is the sixth civil servant working in the Department of Transport, Energy and Communications at the time of the licence competition who has given evidence. No witness to date has said he or she had a reason to believe the licence competition was interfered with.